Andorra's citizen army has not fought a battle in more than 700 years
Tucked into the Pyrenees, Andorra has never kept a standing army in modern times. Its defence rests on an old principle: when the call called the Sometent sounds, every able-bodied man should turn out. That force has not seen combat in over seven centuries, and its main job now is carrying the national flag at ceremonies.
Before the First World War the principality kept about 600 part-time militiamen, led by a captain and a lieutenant and overseen by two officials, one appointed by France and one by the Bishop of Urgell. They could not be sent to serve outside Andorra. Uniforms and weapons passed down through families and villages rather than being issued by any quartermaster.
Policing gradually took over the practical work. A police corps formed in 1931, and after unrest around the 1933 elections a French gendarmerie detachment stayed for two months. When the police were reorganised the next year, one corporal per parish carried the duty of raising a fighting force from local men, six parishes at the time, since a seventh was added only in 1978. Today the permanent Sometent is a twelve-man ceremonial unit, though every family is still expected to have access to a firearm. According to former head of government Marc Forné Molné, the military budget comes purely from voluntary donations. The last general call-out came during the 1982 floods in the Catalan Pyrenees, to help residents and keep order.
Citizen forces elsewhere have had livelier careers. When British troops attacked Buenos Aires in the early 1800s, Santiago de Liniers enlisted every man able to carry a weapon, including low-ranking criollos and some enslaved people, and the invaders were beaten twice. Those militias then became a political springboard and helped drive the May Revolution against Spanish rule.
Australia's Volunteer Defence Corps, founded in 1940 by the Returned and Services League amid fears of Japanese invasion, began so improvised that members drilled in business suits. The government later absorbed and armed it, then disbanded it once the threat had passed at the close of the war. The word militia itself descends from Latin, where it meant defence service.
Source: Militia
